The Gravity Project (TGP) is a professional ensemble composed of artists from various spheres of the performing world –actors, designers, master movement and voice trainers, dancers, puppeteers, and musicians. We work in a deeply collaborative laboratory guided by inspiration from image, movement, environment, sound, text, and music.  

We develop pieces over long periods of time, trusting the time it takes for full-blooded, and intricately crafted productions to emerge.  This long development process is ideally suited for collaborations with other companies and regional theatres. Simply – we thrive on training, learning, deepening our work. 

The professionals of The Gravity Project form the teaching faculty for an innovative training program in residence at Juniata College, a liberal arts college nestled in the beautiful woods of Pennsylvania.  We work in a new $10.5 million theatre complex that offers our students a first-rate theatrical playground for their training.  TGP professionals come from far and wide –  New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Toronto, London – enjoying the retreat of our beautiful hills and woods, and the intense focus of our program. 

We welcome audiences into an immediate theatre experience fusing movement, text, music, and imagery – a shared experience that, through its clarity and dense beauty, urges a larger imagination for a theatre that can express what it is to be awake in this, our only world.

TGP is a company full of master teachers, each of whom brings a wealth of professional artistry and international teaching to the company.   We create +  train together at the intersection of expressions living within the company – Fitzmaurice Voicework, Shakespeare, Skinner Releasing, Butoh, Mime, Aerial Dance, Lecoq, and Contact Improvisation.  

Our week-long TRAINING RETREATS, in a gorgeous new center by a large lake, involve TGP artists and other professionals that we invite to train and develop new work with us.  Below are a few shots of our training, at the retreat center, and in our home theatre.

We tailor IMAGINATIVE RESIDENCIES from the breadth of expertise and love for teaching within the company.   Teaching sessions may be narrowly focused toward any of these modes for theatre professionals or students, or more broadly conceived for cross-disciplinary groups.  

You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.

Begin again the story of your life.

                                    - Jane Hirshfield

A bold work of original physical theatre – Nine Gates brings audiences an inspiring, fresh look at contemporary poetry, through a beautifully composed collection of staged poems from the finest poets working today.  The work interprets new poetic styles by fusing sumptuous movement and elegant staging for a visceral ensemble piece of magic, humor, and depth. 

Nine Gates is inspired by poet Jane Hirshfield’s book of essays Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry.

Stunning – exquisitely conceived, developed, and realized – and it looked drop-dead gorgeous. . . 

                         - Guy Klucevsek on Nine Gates

 We have had poem set to music for a long time.  I found myself wondering if you might not have invented a genre.  They have become embodied.   It is a choreography of the human condition.

                        - Jane Hirshfield on Nine Gates

Andrew Belser, Artistic Director

Andrew Belser is Artistic Director of The Gravity Project and Head of Theatre at Juniata College.  Belser’s career as a director and teacher has centered on movement forms, voice/breath work, and interdisciplinary approaches to theatre.  He partnered with over 15 other professionals in the founding of The Gravity Project, a professional theatre company, center for performance research, and incubator for new work by innovative international artists.

Andrew Belser's most recent work with The Gravity Project was writing and directing TGP’s newest work Return, an homage to a rural American childhood fusing film and live performance with shadow puppets.  Belser directed the premiere of Russell Davis’ Crispin, an adaptation of Avi’s Newbury Award-winning novel, in a co-production between TGP and People’s Light and Theatre in Philadelphia.  Other recent directing credits include: Made in Taiwan, written and performed by Michelle Krusiec; Nine Gates (TGP creation), a movement meditation of contemporary poetry based on poet Jane Hirshfield’s book of essays Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry;  enrico4 (TGP creation) , a jazz-infused, fashion/runway event inspired by Pirandello’s Henry IV; Standing Stone, a puppet/movement piece about a sense of place; HE, a clown-filled, multi-language tango tragedy; The Body of Mystery, a  movement landscape of Judeo-Christian myth; Songs and Lives, a music/performance piece featuring the live playing by The Audubon Quartet; and The Sympathetic Weight of Bones, a meditation on love co-conceived with Whit MacLaughlin. His directing career has included premieres of Russell Davis’s The Second Death of Priscilla and The Wild Goose Circus, Leslie Lee’s The Ninth Wave, and John Mighton’s The Little Years.  A few of the scripts Belser has directed include: Wedekind’s Spring’s Awakening, Ionesco’s Exit the King and The Bald Soprano, Frisch’s The Firebugs, and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Andrew Belser frequently works with Catherine Fitzmaurice as a lead teacher/evaluator in the two-year certification program for Fitzmaurice Voicework.  Andrew Belser is the 2003 recipient of the Carnegie Pennsylvania Professor of the Year Award.

Stephanie Skura, Associate Artistic Director

for more information, please visit Stephanie's website:  http://stephanieskura.com

Stephanie has created interdisciplinary movement-based performances for over 20 years. Her process focuses on the power and totality of each performer, collaboratively discovering & developing material. She has an international reputation for her adventurous work, performing and teaching in 30 of the United States and 13 countries. Her New York City-based touring company performed worldwide for 10 years.

Now based in the Pacific Northwest, she works independently with many companies, artists and institutions. Formerly on Graduate Faculty at the University of Washington School of Drama Professional Actors Training Program, and Core Faculty of the Skinner Releasing Institute, she has taught at such places as the American Dance Festival, Florida Dance Festival, European Dance Development Center, Naropa Institute, Movement Research in New York, and as a guest at many colleges and universities around the country.

She has received 7 Choreography Fellowships and 5 Dance Company Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the first "Bessie Awards" for Choreography, and many other government, foundation and corporate grants, as well as commissions from several dance companies. She currently resides in Seattle.
 

Randy Ward – Scene Designer

Randy Ward is Director of the MFA program in Design and Technical Theatre at Virginia Tech, where he has been designing and teaching at Virginia Tech for 30 years. He designed the Studio Theatre, a thrust theatre space where much of the production work of the Theatre Arts Department is performed. He serves as a theatre consultant to architects and groups planning design or renovation of theatre facilities.

Randy also serves as a set and lighting designer for Ping Chong & Company, designing work that has been produced in the U.S. and abroad.  For The Gravity Project, he has worked on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Crispin: The Cross of the Lead, enrico4, Nine Gates and Return.

Enrico4, The Gravity Project, Scenography by Randy Ward

Nine Gates, The Gravity Project, Scenography by Randy Ward

Return, The Gravity Project, Scenography by Randy Ward

John Ambrosone – Lighting Designer

for more information, please visit John's website at: http://www.johnambrosone.com/clients/ambrosonej/nav/splash.shtml

John Ambrosone Lighting Designs include the Broadway production of David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood; the Off Broadway production of Nocturne by Adam Rapp at New York Theatre Workshop; and the North American Tour of The King Stag.

Regional theatre credits include designs at the American Repertory Theatre (over forty five productions as resident lighting designer), Alley Theatre, Arena Stage, Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Prince Music Theatre, Coconut Grove Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Capitol Repertory, Merrimack Repertory, Royal George Theatre of Chicago, North Shore Music Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, and Virginia Stage Company.
Internationally, John has designed productions at the Teatre Municipal in Sao Paulo, Brazil; France 3 Television Studios in Strasbourg, France; Theatro Des Westens in Berlin, Germany; Tokyo Globe Theatre in Tokyo, Japan; Royal Court and Royal Shakespeare theatres in London, England; Manuel Doblado Theatre in Leon, Mexico; Festival Of The Arts in Singapore; Moscow Art Theatre in Moscow, Russia; and the Taipei National Theatre in Taipei, Taiwan.
In addition to his work in theatre, opera, and dance, Mr. Ambrosone has designed for a variety of special event venues, as well as, experience in teaching lighting design. He is a member of United Scenic Artists local 829 and the United States Institute For Theatre Technology.

Return, The Gravity Project, Lighting Design by John Ambrosone

Catherine Fitzmaurice – Founding TGP Member, Founder of Fitzmaurice Voicework

for more information about Catherine and Fitzmaurice Voicework, please visit: http://fitzmauricevoice.com/

"[Catherine] is a theatre artist and teacher of the very highest rank. She has provided practical help and real expressive power to so many fine actors. She is a warm, gentle, compassionate teacher with a sense of humor, devotion to her charges, and passion for her work."
                                                                                         — Frank Galati, Tony Award-winning Director, Associate Director, Goodman Theatre

Catherine teaches Voice and Text to private clients in New York City, as well as around the United States and internationally. She has taught Voice and Text at Yale School of Drama, Harvard/A.R.T., the Juilliard School, NYU's Graduate Acting program, ACT, UCLA, USC, New York's Actors Center, London University, the Central School of Speech and Drama, in workshops, and in theatre and medical conference presentations for voice professionals. She is Professor of Theatre at the University of Delaware, where she teaches Acting to undergraduates.

Catherine has been Voice, Speech, Text, and Dialect coach and consultant for award-winning directors Frank Galati, Mark Lamos, JoAnne Akalaitis, Des McAnuff, Michael Langham, Stan Wojewodski, Robert Wilson, and Ivo van Hove, at such venues as ACT, La Jolla Playhouse, Goodman Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Stratford/Canada, Hartford Stage, Yale Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Center Stage, Shakespeare Theatre, Arena Stage, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, New York Shakespeare Festival, and New York Theatre Workshop. She coached Haing Ngor's Academy Award-winning performance in The Killing Fields.

Catherine has been invited to lecture and conduct workshops for theatre and medical colleagues at international theatres, universities, and conferences: at the Moscow Art Theatre, the International Slavic University in Moscow, Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski in Italy, Pan-European Voice Conference (PEVOC) in Germany, International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI) in Israel, as Chancellor's Distinguished Lecturer in Drama at the University of California-Irvine, and numerous times at several colleges and universities, ATHE, VASTA, and the Care of the Professional Voice Symposium of the Voice Foundation.

Catherine has acted for Robert Wilson as Goneril in Lear at Metromedia Studios in Los Angeles, as a member of the company at ACT for three years, on the national tour of Whose Life is it Anyway? with Brian Bedford, and many other venues.
 

Kate Clarke, Performer, TGP Academic Coordinator, Asst. Professor of Theatre at Juniata College

Kathleen Lisa Clarke is in full-time residence as the Asst. Professor of Theatre and TGP Academic coordinator.  She moved to her current position from New York, where she was a   singer, actress and teacher. A graduate of Oberlin College (BA), and The University of Washington (MFA), she has been seen on both small and regional stages in New York, Seattle, Edinburgh, Denver, San Francisco, Cleveland, Jacksonville, New Orleans and Moscow, ID. TV credits for Kathleen include Northern Exposure, Medicine Ball, Third Watch, and Hope and Faith. Film credits include Crocodile Tears, Angel Street, Music and Lyrics, and My Sassy Girl. Kate has taught acting, movement and voice at Oberlin Theater Institute, the University of Washington, Tulane University, CUNY Hunter College and Juniata College. She is a member of the professional ensemble at The Gravity Project-a theater company based in Huntingdon, PA. In New York she has worked with the SITI Company, SOHO Rep, 78th Street Theater Lab and NADA, and has been a collaborator at BMI, a laboratory for new work in musical theater.

With the Gravity Project, Kate appeared as Donna Matilda in an adaptation of Pirandello's enrico4, as the Mouth in Beckett's Not I , Widow Daventry and Ensemble in Crispin: The Cross of Lead, and Anna in Return.  Most recently, she directed Pippin and Angels In America: Millennium Approaches at Juniata College, where she now teaches full time.